[2][3][4][5] The economic stability of fictional Wakonda, Oregon, is threatened when the local logging union calls a strike against a large lumber conglomerate.

When independent logger Hank Stamper and his father Henry are urged to support the strikers, they refuse, and the townspeople consider them traitors.

Also complicating matters is Leland "Lee" Stamper, Henry's youngest son and Hank's half-brother, who returns home with a college education and experience in urban living.

After aiding their adversaries when their lives are in peril, the Stampers are handed two calamities at once, a falling tree that severs Henry's arm, and a trunk that crushes Joe Ben in shallow water.

Although both Sam Peckinpah and Budd Boetticher had expressed interest in bringing Ken Kesey's novel to the screen, Richard A. Colla was signed to direct the film in May 1970.

Five weeks after principal photography began, Colla left the project due to "artistic differences over photographic concept", as well as a required throat operation.

The film's theme song, "All His Children", with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and music by Henry Mancini, is performed by Charley Pride.

The film was one of the first two programs (after a New York Rangers–Vancouver Canucks NHL game) and the first movie presentation to be broadcast by Home Box Office (HBO) when the pay television network launched in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on November 8, 1972,[10] airing less than two years after its initial theatrical release.

My only real objection to the film, I think, is a certain impatience with the screenplay, which lumberingly sets up almost a very physical and emotional crisis that can (and, indeed, must) erupt before this kind of movie can be said to have decently met its obligations.

"[12] Quentin Tarantino called it "a good somewhat compromised movie, that is justly famous for one of the greatest scenes in early seventies cinema...

The problem lies in the fact that the actors do such a good job creating the family dynamic of these selfish hard heads, you wish the production attacked the material from the outset with more ambition.